News Release

New collaboration with Cleveland Clinic offers online medical education credits to BMJ readers

Editorial: Continuing medical education for BMJ readers

Business Announcement

BMJ

The BMJ has joined forces with the Cleveland Clinic in the US to offer certified continuing medical education (CME) credits to all of its readers.

Both parties have long histories of involvement in the education of doctors. The BMJ publishes articles that help doctors make better decisions, while the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Continuing Education has emerged as one of world's largest academic providers of continuing medical education.

This collaboration will therefore benefit doctors and other health professionals around the world.

The programme will start with modules linked to BMJ research articles, chosen for their focus on important and clinically relevant questions, and whose findings are applicable to a wide cross section of readers.

"Because these are open access, this allows us to make CME activities available to all doctors and other health professionals wherever they are in the world and whether or not they subscribe to the BMJ," explains Steven Kawczak, Associate Director at the Cleveland Clinic Centre for Continuing Education. "In time we plan to extend CME credits to other content on bmj.com, including clinical reviews, practice articles, and editorials."

The Cleveland Clinic's CME accreditation will ensure that BMJ CME meets demanding standards of effective educational planning and design as well as independence from commercial interests.

Readers will be able to claim credit toward the American Medical Association Physician's Recognition Award (AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™) for each module they pass. This involves reading the research article online and completing a set of multiple choice questions hosted on BMJ Learning (http://www.bmjlearning.com).

Once readers have achieved an 80% pass on the test, they can claim their credit and the Cleveland Clinic will provide them with a CME certificate. If they fail the test initially, they can retake it until they pass. The Cleveland Clinic will also maintain a record of which modules readers have completed.

"We hope you will try this new approach to online continuing medical education and that you will give us your feedback, so that we too can continue to improve on what we provide," say Steven Kawczak and Kirsten Patrick, Assistant Editor at the BMJ.

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